If you’ve ever been to a Bucks game and seen a handmade gatling gun send a sausage rocketing towards the stands, then you are familiar with the work of Exciting Events.
While the aptly named “Bratzooka” is the creation of
Exciting Events subsidiary FX in Motion, the parent company is known for no less dizzying production skills.
In addition to creating fanatically fun gear for sports teams, the New Berlin-based event production company puts on dozens of events across the state and country on an annual basis, including a bevy of galas and seven different national ballroom dance competitions.
This July – in addition to handling its typical seven to eight events per week – the business is in the running to put on around a dozen events related to the
2024 Republican National Convention, which is expected to draw more than 50,000 delegates, media professionals and politicos to Milwaukee.
As of press time, Exciting Events has signed on to produce a fundraising fair at Malchine Farms in Waterford for Washington D.C.-based political strategy and fundraising firm WinCo Fundraising LLC and has been contracted to create a custom podcasting and radio broadcasting booth for iHeart Radio at UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, where much of the 15,000 members of the media covering the RNC will be stationed.
For the farm fair, the company will be doing traditional decor, audio/video production, lighting, custom graphics and a stage set.
Spanning 60 feet long and 20 feet deep, the iHeart Radio booth will feature several designated podcasting/radio broadcasting areas: one three-person desk in the center for iHeart-branded content and two spaces on either side for affiliated radio stations, said Todd Scheel, president, chief executive officer and founder of Exciting Events.
“So, at some point there could be five podcasts all going on at the same time in this one booth,” said Scheel.
Exciting Events is also in talks with The Washington Post to turn DOC’s Smokehouse, located at 754 Vel R. Phillips Ave., into its operating hub for the convention.
“We’re putting graphics on every window in this space and building a custom stage set where sponsors’ logos can be pulled on and off, depending upon what podcasts they’re doing,” Scheel said. “The cool thing about that is the owner of the bar was like ‘just do whatever you want.’ He’s allowing us to come in and take all his branding off the windows and put up the other branding. So, we’re taking care of him – doing a couple of things for him on the side – and he’s taking care of us. And at that point there, when you got people willing to do that, it’s like, ‘Yep, we’re taking that job all day long.’”
Being selective
Scheel said he and his staff will be busy with plenty of RNC-related events, but not so many that the company is forced to give less attention to events for its longtime clients.
“We’re being really selective and the reason being is there’s so much opportunity and limited time and labor,” he said. “And we are busy with other regular clients, too. Things aren’t shutting down in Milwaukee, other stuff’s happening.”
Around the time of the RNC, Exciting Events is putting on a national ballroom dance competition in Las Vegas.
“That’s a client we’ve had for eight years,” said Scheel.
He said the firm had originally wanted to nail down two major contracts for the RNC, but that didn’t work out. In the end, Scheel realized that given the resources one or two larger events can eat up, it’s more advantageous to do three medium-size events instead.
The firm was also careful not to bid on work too far inside the RNC’s preliminary security zone, which would mean real headaches for covering any last-minute needs or snafus.
“There’s a ton of business to be had,” he said. “I’m more than happy with what we have, and we’re definitely going to have a full plate, but we’re making sure we’re not overpromising. We would rather deliver a great product and be happy with what we did than overpromise and be caught by security lines and not be able to produce it.”
Being prepared
With that in mind, Scheel and his 40 employees aren’t leaving anything to chance. In fact, the company is overstaffing for the week of the RNC.
“We call it all hands on deck. There are weekends where I’m working, my wife’s working, friends are working, employees’ friends are working,” Scheel said. “I need to overstaff … Everybody knows what it’s going to take to pull it off.”
And fortunately, the companies Exciting Events is looking to work with understand that a major political convention presents a unique situation, he said.
Typically, the event planning process requires “spending a lot of time with the client to figure out what their wants are, and it takes a while to get to the end result,” said Scheel. But for RNC-related events, there’s a much shorter timeline, so the team has had to be more forthright, asking about expectations and budget right off the bat.
“And we’ll tell you if we even want to quote the thing,” he said. “It gets to the bottom line fast.”
Overall, Scheel is happy about the way the company’s RNC business is shaping up.
“It’s going to be a busy seven to 10 days, but nothing is stacked directly on top of each other,” he said. “It’s actually been an absolute blast.”
